If this poem had been part of the script of On the Waterfront, and we heard the word "fate" uttered by Marlon Brando (who keeps pigeons, in that picture!), we'd perhaps be tempted to think that what he was really saying was "faith".

Because of his accent, the same accent we who have fallen off the hay-rick use when we plead, "But... I coulda been a contendah".

But it's a picture in which fate blots out faith, in the end, so I don't know.

I know how Virgil feltstanding alone betweenHomer and Dantehis two prized goatswhose horns madesmall incisions in the airon market dayI know how responsibilityfelt standing nakedbetween free willand biology its fateI know how the drinkfelt between the bottleand the mouthand the bulletbetween the chamberand the revolutionuntil a pigeon flew downand shat on my sophiain a country of pigeonsI know how it felt

Part of Brando's brilliance -- that "bit of business" with the glove, which gives the scene so much life.

We're reminded of his amazing improvisation in The Godfather. Just before Vito suffers his fatal heart attack, in his garden with his grandson, he puts that orange peel under his top lip, like a fighter's mouth piece. Orange-peel teeth. The kid playing the grandson is really scared. No one told him that was going to happen. He wasn't expecting it. That touch makes the scene, like the bit with the glove in On the Waterfront. Sheer genius, what else can one say. The lost art of on-screen poetry.

Peter,

Homer, Dante, Brando, Seferis, Guru Penguin, Eva Marie Saint, biology, free will, fate... this is turning into quite a revival meeting. Let's make a real shindig out of it and invite that ultimate party animal John Milton, to sing

...In discourse more sweet;For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense.Others apart sat on a hill retired,In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned highOf Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost...

Charles Olson used to offer that triadic option to his gawking followers. "Which would you choose?" he'd say. Once, posing the question as he went down his back stairs in a snowstorm, he took a giant step and tumbled into a three-foot-high drift. That pretty much ruled out foreknowledge absolute and free will, in one fell swoop. Now had Brando done that scene, playing Olson, imagine how much more fun losing Paradise might have been...

"pigeons in the light" (and on the grass alas, "crickets make me nervous") "people we once loved" (first kiss at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYaSEygOFbs&feature=related), pairs of doves sometimes landing on the branch out there, this morning a shadowed bird . . .